Architects Being Drawn in New Directions
For centuries, the role of architects has been to design buildings and observe construction. Today, however, design is becoming an ever-smaller role as architects take on an expanding list of tasks unrelated to their traditional practices.
A case in point is architect Richard Huelsman, president of Los Angeles-based MCG Architects, who prides himself on his ability to introduce people who can do business with one another.
“I will get a call from Rich [Huelsman] saying, ‘I am working on a project with a developer for a proposed shopping center, and he is unsure how to get the project financed,’ ” said Emmett Albergotti, senior vice president of San Diego-based Excel Legacy Corp. On several occasions, Excel has become a financial partner of developers introduced by the architect.
Playing matchmaker among builders, a role filled historically by real estate brokers, is evidence of the changes in the architectural profession. In recent years, architects have become development consultants, finders of development sites, construction managers and software designers. Many architects, seeking to make themselves useful to builders and landlords, have become experts in real estate development and property management.
In the view of some architects, the focus of their jobs has shifted from designing buildings to acting as experts in the management, improvement and alteration of buildings throughout their life cycle. In other words, the role of the architect as artist or creator is becoming only one of a number of service lines that design firms offer their clients.
Indeed, only a minority of design students hope to become the next Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Gehry, according to Louis Naidorf, dean of the school of architecture and design at Woodbury University in Burbank. Among architectural students in recent graduating classes, he estimates that only 15% to 20% have ended up as designers, while the rest are in administrative or technical roles.
A survey at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., revealed that only about half of those students who planned to become licensed architects expected to design, said Richard W. Hobbs, vice president of professional practice at American Institute of Architects in Washington. The rest, he said, saw themselves going into such specialties as facilities management, construction management, strategic planning and computer animation.
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A century ago, architects had the luxury of concerning themselves almost entirely with design and supervising construction. At that time, when Wright was a young man, a competent designer could master all three of the basic types of construction--wood, masonry and iron--as well as the design of plumbing and heating systems.
Changes in technology, as well as the real estate profession, are forcing changes in the architectural profession. New building technologies, materials and mechanical systems have proliferated. Computer automation, which scarcely existed in architecture 20 years ago, is now central to design production.
Buildings themselves have changed. British architect Francis C. Duffy has written that the physical structure of today’s buildings may have a life of 50 years, while mechanical systems like heating and air conditioning may last 15 years, and interior architecture may last only three or four years.
While the ambition to design buildings still remains strong among many students, said Hobbs, “there are so many other pre-design services that are needed, and so many post-construction services, that the overall profession [of architecture] will become totally integrated” into maintaining buildings throughout their life cycle, not just at their inception.
“We call this [range of activity] defining, designing, construction and operation,” Hobbs said.
“It used to be that developers would have the whole project in hand, then seek an architect, who had the limited role of designing and preparing construction documents for a building, and then was gone from the picture,” Naidorf said. “We are finding [today] that architects are involved in a consulting role in the selection of land, obtaining entitlements [such as building permits] for owners, working with city government--the whole pre-development process of planning and economic analysis and feasibility studies.”
Hobbs said, “Once you become the trusted advisor of the client in this relationship, the client will be asking the architect to be involved in a much broader range of services.”
In one case, MCG was able to cement a relationship with a shopping center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and continue that relationship despite a change in ownership. The mall owner, General Growth Management Inc. of Chicago hired the architecture firm to renovate the shopping center and add new stores. The owner later relied on the architects for the design of ongoing maintenance jobs. Recently, the owner sold the project to the Macerich Co. of Santa Monica, which itself has rehired MCG to build a new department store building and additional store space.
In other cases, relationships rather than projects create the continuity that results in ongoing work for architects. In a West Hollywood shopping center, MCG served as a consultant to the property manager, who referred the architect to a new tenant in need of design work. As a result, MCG got the job of designing a store in the same center for Sporting Club LA, a high-end apparel retailer.
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The emphasis of architecture is shifting from creating a building to assisting the people who own and use the building, according to Hobbs. That means that architects are moving from a “technology-based profession to a service-based profession,” he said. “We are talking about a profession that is moving beyond projects, into more of a ‘client-centric’ approach, rather than a ‘project-centric’ approach,” Hobbs said.
In this way, the future of architecture is much more focused on the functionality of buildings, rather than aesthetics alone--an idea that would have shocked architects a few decades ago. Such an attitude “does not mean that [buildings] can’t be aesthetic,” Hobbs said. In the long run, however, “the building is only a container or environment in which to accomplish something,” he added.
Another nontraditional application of architecture is the Internet-based company Civic Technologies created by Los Angeles architect Marc A. Futterman. The service enables real estate companies to monitor the condition of properties as well as trends in surrounding urban areas on a “real time” basis. Although the service does not involve design in the traditional sense, Futterman said that the business was fully in keeping with his role as architect.
“Architecture is all about defining issues and solving problems creatively,” he added.
